River Pollution

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The Environment Bill that is soon to be introduced will, as I said, place a statutory requirement on water companies to produce drainage and wastewater management plans. In addition to that, water companies have agreed that between 2020 and 2025 they will be investing £4.6 billion to protect the environment, of which around £4 billion relates to wastewater.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, while I believe in tackling root causes, the Minister mentioned buffer zones. They are extremely practical because they reduce pollution going into watercourses and also create biodiversity corridors. At the moment the advice is for 20 metres. Is it perhaps time to increase that to 30 or even 40 metres, to make them even more effective?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely important point. The department is actively looking at what more we can do using the new Nature4Climate Fund and the transition from CAP to ELM to incentivise a much higher standard of management either side of waterways throughout the country. I hope that on the back of that we will be able to produce a compelling programme.